Young African women who received PhDs under 30

Musawenkosi Saurombe (23)

A Zimbabwean by birth, this young lady is the youngest in the list of women to have attained the academic height of a doctorate degree, at the age of only 23. Today, she is an ambassador for Higher Education in Botswana, the country in which she grew up.

Friends and colleagues describe her as a child prodigy: she skipped a grade in elementary school and entered the university at the age of 16, moving to South Africa to pursue a Bachelor’s degree at North-West University.

By the age of 21, she had received her Master’s degree and then at 23, she broke the continental record when she bagged a PhD.

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“My father had to sell his car, just to get me through my third year of study and also the general social challenges, usually being that I was the youngest in my class,” she sums up her journey to achieving this giant feat.